China Detentions Take Luster Off Clinton Visit

President Clinton landed in this capital Friday night amid diminished expectations for diplomatic breakthroughs during his trip here and embarrassing acrimony over the Chinese regime’s detentions of dissidents.

The president flew here from the central Chinese city of Xian to prepare for a formal welcome in Tiananmen Square this morning--a ceremony likely to be the most closely watched and the most politically sensitive moment of his trip because it will occur near the place where hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Chinese demonstrators were killed by army troops in June 1989.

Clinton has already been harshly criticized by human rights groups and by many in Congress for agreeing to go along with Chinese protocol, which calls for state visitors to be welcomed at the square. Reports over the past few days that Chinese authorities have detained several dissidents in the cities where Clinton will be visiting are certain to increase the decibel level of this criticism.

Chinese authorities have also blocked the Web sites of some human rights groups and news organizations in China, and just before Clinton’s departure from Washington, they rescinded the Chinese visas of three Washington-based journalists for Radio Free Asia.

That such harassment of dissidents is routine in China has brought little comfort to the traveling party of U.S. dignitaries.

Clinton and his top aides seemed to be thrown off balance by the extent to which China’s repression of political dissent has become an issue in the early days of the president’s trip here.

These actions by the Chinese regime intensified the anxieties of Clinton and his aides that their policy of engagement with China will be subjected to even more political criticism at home.

Republican leaders have already excoriated Clinton’s China policy in recent weeks, and the GOP is likely to launch new attacks after he returns.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry complained during Clinton’s plane ride across the Pacific that no Republicans had been willing to join the presidential delegation to China.

“We did extend an invitation to the [Senate] majority leader and the [House] speaker,” McCurry said. “There were some Republican members interested. But we were advised by the leadership that none would be available.”

On Friday, Clinton and his top aides took care to emphasize in public that they did not condone China’s arrests of dissidents.

“I found the reports disturbing, and I’ve asked Ambassador [James R.] Sasser to raise it with the Chinese authorities,” Clinton said, referring to the U.S. envoy to China.

“If true, they represent not China at its best and not China looking forward but looking backward,” the president told American reporters Friday morning on a visit to the village of Xiahe outside Xian. “One of the reasons that I came here was to discuss both privately and publicly issues of personal freedom. . . . It makes it all the more important that we continue to work with the Chinese and to engage them.”

Later Friday, National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger denounced China’s actions in much blunter terms.

“People are not debris to be swept up for a visitor,” he said at a news conference in Xian. “I think China’s human rights record is terrible. . . . I think there’s been some progress in human rights, but it has been not nearly enough.”

In rounding up those who might voice public dissent, Berger said, “the Chinese security apparatus is doing what comes naturally to them.”

He said he was not surprised because the regime took similar steps during other visits to China by senior U.S. officials, such as the 1994 Beijing trip by then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

“They [Chinese authorities] see a trip like this with a combination of . . . anticipation and some fear,” Berger said. “But if China is going to make that next step into really being a nation whose practices are fully acceptable to the international community, this is not a step in that direction.”

Among the concerns that arose Friday was the whereabouts of Bishop Julias Jia Zhiguo, the cleric of Zhengding in Hebei province near Beijing.

He was arrested in the last few days, according to the Cardinal Kung Foundation of Stamford, Conn., which monitors the underground Roman Catholic Church in China.

The foundation said in a statement that “before his arrest, Bishop Jia was notified by the Chinese . . . that he would be taken away during the visit of President Clinton to China.”

To top off a combative day with Chinese officialdom, what McCurry termed an “overeager” Chinese security official tried to stop two Asian American White House valets as they tried to load Clinton’s garment bags onto Air Force One as the aircraft was being prepared for departure Friday night from Xian.

McCurry said the official approached the two valets and began shouting, apparently arguing that they should not be allowed to board. After a two- to three-minute argument with U.S. officials, the valets got on the presidential plane, which then departed for Beijing.

Immediately after his Tiananmen Square welcome, Clinton begins the main political talks of his trip, meeting first with Chinese President Jiang Zemin and later lunching with Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji.

On the eve of the sessions, administration officials acknowledged that they were still negotiating with the Chinese over what accords might be reached. One possibility would be a pact in which China and the United States agree not to aim nuclear missiles at each other.

“There are some matters that are still under discussion,” Berger said. He acknowledged that China still insists that the United States promise to never use nuclear weapons first in a conflict--a pledge that would run counter to long-standing U.S. military doctrine.

The White House was even more pessimistic Friday about prospects for progress on Tibet.

U.S. officials said this spring that, with China’s release into exile of political dissidents Wei Jingsheng and Wang Dan, the administration is giving a new, higher priority in its human rights agenda to pressing the Beijing regime about Tibet.

The administration is seeking the release of Tibetan prisoners and new talks between Chinese leaders and the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

Those who have followed the issue closely say Clinton aides had hoped for a breakthrough on Tibet but had lowered expectations as the summit neared; U.S. officials now hope to negotiate confidence-building measures that might pave the way for talks between the Chinese and the Dalai Lama.

But with the added complication of India’s recent nuclear tests, Clinton seems unlikely to achieve even these more modest goals.

The Dalai Lama escaped a Communist Chinese crackdown in 1959 by fleeing to India, which has given him asylum ever since.

Berger said Friday that “we have made a number of suggestions relating to . . . Tibet” in talks with the Chinese.

But, he added, “I would not anticipate that we would see the fruits of those discussions while we are here.” He said he hoped that China might ease some policies toward Tibet after the summit.

As his senior aides protested the detentions of dissidents and negotiated key issues, the president visited the famed terra-cotta warriors, discovered in 1974 a few miles from Xian. He also dropped in on a nearby village that has cashed in on the tourism for the 2,000-year-old archeological wonders.

Clinton, with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, daughter Chelsea and mother-in-law Dorothy Rodham, spent Friday afternoon on a five-hour cultural extravaganza that included close inspection of the ruins--more than 1,000 of the estimated 3,000 terra-cotta soldiers, horses and chariots, ordered built by the Emperor Qin Shi Huang and buried near him to protect him and sustain his power after death.

White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, who accompanied Clinton on the tour, spent $1,100 for a life-sized replica of a warrior.

“My wife will either like it or she’s going to kill me,” he said.

To hear Times correspondents’ audio reports from China on The Times’ Web site, go to: https://www.latimes.com/china